I have always loved animals. Ever since I was a little girl I have wanted to be a veterinarian. I had this doctor play set that I would use to “fix” my sick stuffed animals. I also used to wander around the neighborhood playing with all of the neighbor’s animals. I have never even thought of a different job I could ever do when I “grow up” besides taking care of animals. However, it wasn’t until high school that I discovered which type I truly loved best.
I was in my junior year of high school when I decided it would be fun to take an animal science class. Not only did it fill a science requirement, it would be a fun class since it was all about animals. In this class, we were given a project. The teacher had saved some baby bulls from a dairy where they were basically thrown away. These bulls were skinny from starvation and sick from who knows what. The farmers refused to give these babies any food since the bulls were of no use to the farmers. The farmers just took them and threw them out back to die. Now since they had a large dairy, no legal action was taken against them. But thankfully for the baby cows my teacher saved them.
Each of the students, including myself, were given one of these calves to take care of and try to nurse back to health. I was excited because this is the kind of thing I wanted to do when I “grew up”. I took care of the bull yo the best of my ability. I went to that farm every day and night to feed that bull ( I even gave it the name of “Little Moo”), I played with it and walked it, and I even gave it shots of antibiotics and had to give it pills to help it get better ( as I explained earlier, these bulls were in bad shape). After about a month, I am sad to say that Little Moo, as well as many of the other baby bulls died, due to the illnesses they received from the dairy. This experience inspired me to pursue a degree in large animal veterinary medicine. And, after earning my degree, I plan to open a rescue center for abused and abandoned farm animals.
What does this have to do with a research paper? Well, I have been researching for a while the reasons behind why farm animals are abuses. Mostly it is because large dairies and farms just don’t care about the animals, they care about the money they make. Because of this selfish attitude, we have many humans getting sick due to meat and animal product illnesses. One of the most well known diseases is known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, commonly known as mad cow disease.
Since mad cow disease is a food borne illness, it does not affect everyone. Vegans and vegetarians have nothing to worry about since they don’t eat meat. However, it was found that the average American consumes 67lbs of beef per year (Economic research service). Why so much? It is easy to get, very tasty, cheap, and an American classic. When we thing American food what is the first thing we usually think of? Grilled hamburgers and frenchfrys. By serving this tasty American classic, Mc Donald’s has become the number one fast food company in the world with over $23,522.4M in sales, 32,000 restaurants (14,000 of which are in America) in 120 different countries and 400,000 employees (answers.com). There is hardly a kid in America who doesn’t know what the golden arches mean. Parents love it because it is cheap and easy. If they are tired after work and don’t feel like cooking, they just buy their kid a happy meal for three bucks. If you are a college kid on a budget, you can go to Mickey D’s and get a burger for a buck versus the three bucks for a little parfait at the campus cafeteria. And it’s not just Mc Donald’s with cheap beef. There are other fast food restaurants including Arby’s, Taco Bell, burger king, Wendy’s, and Filaburtos just to name a few. There are thousands of people eating at these places every day. Can you imagine if one of these places received beef tainted with mad cow disease?
This issue affects us all. I, like most of my fellow students, am beef eater. I only eat it a couple times a month, but once is all it takes. This is an issue that has an effect on all of us. You might not be a meat eater yourself, but I am sure you have a friend or family member that enjoys beef. We might wonder is beef safe at all? In my opinion, it is safe, depending on where it comes from and what part of the cow is consumed. I also believe that mad cow wouldn’t be a problem if farmers took care of their cows properly and the FDA did their jobs correctly. There wouldn’t be cases of mad cow in humans if the FDA put certain regulations in place and checked ALL meat properly before it was given to consumers. However, it is the belief of others that mad cow is strictly a disease in which cows get naturally and there is no way to prevent them from getting it. I plan to research the subject fully and present the facts and statements for both sides of this argument as well as to answer the following questions:
-What is mad cow disease?
-How do cows get it?
-How is it transmitted to humans?
-How does this disease affect humans and cows alike?
-What, if anything, can be done to prevent this epidemic?
I too eat beef at least 2-4 times a month & do not want to experience mad cow disease!!! :( or E. Coli! I am just thankful that we live in a country that cares enough to regulate the handling of our food! It can only get better though! Great article! Keep up the good work! LOL Mona
ReplyDeletePeer Review: D#5, HW# 4
ReplyDelete*Do you have any unanwered questions after you finished reading the draft? What are they?*
What do you know about mad cow disease already? What are the statistics on people getting mad cow disease currently?
*What did you like about the draft? How/Why did you like it? How might the author build on that section.*
I really liked the personal intro. Your passion for animals and the subjet really came through in your writing and it made me very interested. I think you could build on this by giving more correlation between the abused animals and mad cow disease towards the end.
*What sections are confusing to you? How/why?*
What are the FDA regulations currently? What would be done to better them?
*Where would you like to know more?*
What are restaurants doing themselves (if anything) to prohibit serving bad meat? Why was animal cruelty prohibited simply because the dairy was large?
*Does the draft provide all the requested information listed in the assignment prompt and grading criteria? If not, what is it missing?*
I really liked how you listed specifically every question that you wanted to answer because it made them very clear; however, it doesn't exactly give a specific time line.
*Editing/Proofreading*
using the owl purdue website I think one of the strategies that would help you best is to switch from writer-centered to reader-centered, which just means to take a step back and revise your paper by removing yourself from the situation.
*Surface and Style elements*
One of the questions asked on the purdue owl website, regarding paragraphs, was: Will your reader be able to identify quickly the "topic" of each paragraph? I couldn't tell what your paper was about until the third paragraph. You may want to consider pointing it out earlier before you dive into your personal relation to the topic.